Revision as of 20:37, June 17, 2007

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Biographical timeline

The future Archimandrite Lazarus was born in 1902 in England. In his early adulthood, he moved to Alberta, Canada, where he worked as a farm labourer for several years. It was here that he sensed the call to become a missionary. He went to an English missionary college for five years. During his time, he became Orthodox, and was received into the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia.

In 1934, he spent seven weeks on Mount Athos, and then he went to Yugoslavia, where he lived as a monk. He was later ordained to the priesthood by Archbishop Feofan (ROCOR), and was sent to (what was then known as) Palestine to serve the Russian Mission in Jerusalem. In 1948, however, Israel was founded and gave the property of the Mission to the Soviet Union; this act left the Russian Mission, under ROCOR, dispossessed. Hieromonk Lazarus then served as a priest to the Russian Convent in Aïn Karim and Transjordan.

This lasted a short period of time. In 1952, Hmk Lazarus was sent to India, where he helped in missionary work for twenty years. Much of his translation work was done and published during this time. Due to black cassock's being offensive to local residents, he wore a white cassock instead. While in India, he met Mother Gabrielia, whom he consulted in his translations of the Fathers and of the Psalter.

In 1972, Archimandrite Lazarus was called to Greece; in 1974, he was called to Australia. In 1983, in what ended up being the most successful missionary endeavour he was involved in, Fr Peter Gillquist invited Archimandrite Lazarus to California to assist the former Evangelical Orthodox Church in their move into the Orthodox Church. He moved to Alaska in 1989 to continue this work. On November 27, 1992, Archimandrite Lazarus reposed in Eagle River, Alaska, from cancer.